Solidarity 4 all Vienna

Solidarity4all Vienna

Solidarity4All is a Greek alliance of self-organised initiatives, partly funded by Syriza yet autonomous in its decisions, which is growing nodes across the world currently. The Viennese S4A is a gathering of people who more or less recently left the Greece and set out to connect struggles across there and Austria. They organise to raise awareness and support for Greek movements, build coalitions and get things moving across Europe, driven by the urgency of the current political and economic situation.

Solidarity4All Vienna is a collective of both Greeks and non-Greeks who live in Vienna and who have decided to act and support the solidarity initiatives from Greece and elsewhere, as well as to create an alternative information platform in Austria. Most of them are victims of the crisis of capitalism ourselves and have immigrated a long time ago. They recognize solidarity as the basic element of co-operation and organisation of people outside of the system. For them, this process is the first step towards social change. Having as main principles solidarity, equality and freedom, Solidarity4All Vienna have decided to actively participate in the struggle for a better tomorrow. In this context, they organize informational and educational meetings and events, movie and documentary screenings, open discussions, interventions and protests. Furthermore, they support other initiatives and collectives, together, they have joined forces in the struggle against the troika and capitalism.

Dear friends and comrades,
In the last four years, Greece has served as guinea pigs in the most vile neoliberal macroeconomic experiment in modern history. The austerity measurements implied by Troika (EU, ECB, IMF) include cut offs in wages and pensions, thousands of lay offs in the public sector, closure of hospitals, leading to a total deconstruction of the social state. Unemployment stands at nearly 28 percent, and youth unemployment is a staggering 64.9 percent. A quarter of the population has trouble putting food on the table, public health is deteriorating, suicide is up 26 percent. The Greek government has reached the extremes of oppression in order to impose the new politics of poverty that ensues from the memoranda. Each and every movement of resistance is confronted by violations of worker’s rights, intense police violence, tear-gas and unlawful arrests. In this austerity frame, the Greek government did not hesitate in June 2013 to show clearly its totalitarian face by closing the national public broadcaster ERT and laying off thousands of employers. The shut down of ERT was a political and social coup and was a clear message for the total abolishment of conquests and rights of decades. The massive mobilization of thousands of people in the case of ERT can and should be transformed into a victorious movement for all working people in order to overturn this policy and the internal and external Troika.

Video Protest: Save ERT (20/6/2013)

Along with the black screen on our televisions, the murder of an activist of the antifascist movement, came as a great shock to the Greek society. The brutal assassination of Pavlos Fyssas by the Golden Dawn Nazis was the tip of the iceberg considering the thousand attacks in the last two years against immigrants, communists and antifascists. After huge demonstrations and under the pressure of the massive antifascist movement, the neo nazi organization is finally accused of being exactly what it is: a criminal organization. However, the decision by the Greek government and the Greek judiciary to finally bring charges against Golden Dawn should not make us forget the responsibility of successive Greek governments and proausterity parties for the rise of Golden Dawn. Both New Democracy and PASOK not only tolerated for a long period the activity of Golden Dawn, but also took advantage of its rise in order to shift the political debate to the right. Golden Dawn is being penalized but the agenda of the far-right has become part of the political mainstream. Racist anti-immigrant policies, authoritarian attacks on protesters in the name of “law and order”, anticommunism are the trademark of the Greek government. In the name of the theory of the “two extremes”, both the radical left and anarchist groups have been attacked.

We are standing in solidarity with the people in Greece and we are doing our best in raising awareness in Austria, on the humanitarian and democratical crisis that the country is facing.

Protest against the murder of antifascist activist Pavlos Fyssas (21/9/2013)